It is now well known to provide information transmission via a satellite station repeating incoming data, transmitted from a first station located at a first location at, or near, the surface of the Earth, for reception by another station situated at a second location on, or near, the surface. One such system using a plurality of satellite repeaters has some of the satellites in non-earth-synchronous orbits near to the planet's surface, and is classified as a Low Earth Orbit system with a large number of satellites, sometimes called a "Big LEO"; this system is designed to provide voice, data, fax, and supplementary services to subscribers worldwide. In the system, each user has a User Terminal, or UT, which can be a hand-held, vehicular-movable or fixed-mounted RF terminal transceiver, capable of connection to other User Terminals or to conventional terrestrial-based telephone networks world-wide through system Ground Control Stations (GCSs). Services are provided globally through three satellite orbital planes, two of which are called the "B" sub-constellation, and one called the "C" sub-constellation. The orbits are optimized to provide regional coverage proportional to the distribution of population on the surface of the earth. The B orbits are sun-synchronous, inclined, elliptical orbits, each with 5 satellites, whereas the C orbit is equatorial, circular and has 6 satellites. The distance from any satellite to a particular UT is constantly changing, in a manner different from the change in the distance between any other satellite and that (or another) UT; thus, the propagation time delays between any pair of system stations and locations will be constantly variable and at least one signal will have to be delayed by a variable amount in order for both signals of any pair to be simultaneously presented, as required for proper system operation.
Thus, in this and other non-synchronous satellite communications systems, the propagation delay between a user terminal and a gateway ground station can vary by dozens of milliseconds as a relaying satellite moves relative to both Earth-surface stations. If this time variation is not properly compensated for as it occurs, there will be at least the following three problems: the apparent received data bit rates will vary from the actual transmitted bit rate by several parts per million (perhaps as much as 20 PPM); diversity combination of the signals received from two, or more, different satellites will become more difficult due to the different signal times of arrival; and handoff of the signal from one satellite to another may result in either lost data or a gap between consecutive data portions, with a gap duration substantially equal to the propagation delay difference between the paths through the different satellites.
It is therefore highly desirable to provide a method for elastically (i.e. variably time delay) buffering at least one of a plurality of incident information transmissions to facilitate the required degree of simultaneous application of the plural transmissions in the system.